Comment EI-24967
Received or sent (printed as 7/15/2016)
July 14, 2016 Dave Navecky Surface Transportation Board 395 E Street SW Washington, DC 20423-0001 Docket No. FD 35952 Attn: Chairman - Daniel R. Elliott III Vice Chairman - Deb Miller Member - Ann D. Begeman To Whom It May Concern: I am writing the Surface Transportation Board today to express my strong opposition to the Great Lakes Basin Transportation and their proposed 278 mile long rail line from Wisconsin through Illinois and on into Indiana. I am also writing to express my deep disappointment in how all the citizens, the municipal leaders of all three states long with their respective town councils and county boards have been treated and affected by the poorly planned and vastly inadequate implementation of the scoping process. I thought it would take me a great deal of research to find the information I needed to write this letter, but your own annual reports and budget requests have provided plenty of fuel for aggravation within the first few paragraphs. Far too much to actually expand on at this time. The fact that this agency was created with every intention of operation outside local, state and federal laws is an immediate red flag that this agency never had the best interest of the citizens at heart. Only the capital interests of private investors and congressional leaders……otherwise there would remain a system of checks and balances to ensure that the general public had some oversight over the activities of the Surface Transportation Board and the impact of its decisions. That is not the case here. You do not have a single committee that represents the interests of citizens only the interests of shippers, rail lines and their investors. No citizen’s review board or oversight committee to protect property, farm and land owners rights from abuses of power and overreaching authority. Your own policies have not protected the constituents along this route from having their lives turned upside down by a project that has neither merit nor backing from area leaders or even other rail carriers touted to be willing to use it. A proposed rail line that has demonstrated it is seriously lacking in any formal planning, vast environmental and safety issues and one that feels the need to hide it’s investors somewhere back in the shadows. There is no transparency to this project which has caused many sleepless nights for the residents, farmers and landowners along its path. This said I refer to you to your own governing policies. 49 U.S. Code 10101 - Rail Transportation Policy Item (12) to prohibit predatory pricing and practices, to avoid undue concentrations of market power, and to prohibit unlawful discrimination; I would consider any attempt to take someone else’s hard earned property as well as the intentional detrimental impact to someone’s else ability to earn a living off their own private land as predatory on the part of the Great Lakes Basin Transportation, LLC as well as the STB. The handling of the notification of citizens along the proposed route was an absolute fiasco and was performed no better than an amateur game show where contestants were allowed their three minutes to defend a lifetimes work and commitment to their land. It is also reprehensible that none of the members charged with making the final decision on behalf of those citizens had the courtesy or respect to attend any of the public hearings along the routes. So far removed from the process that there is no way you can understand the actual impact these proceedings had on the area farmers and landowners threatened with the use of quick take eminent domain. No way to experience the fear and chaos that erupted when honored veteran Robert Jornlin had a heart attack at the Earlville meeting just minutes after addressing your mockery of a public hearing in his attempt to defend his cherished land. No way to experience the fear and anguish as others there to defend their own property jumped in to try to save Mr. Jornlin’s life. No way to experience the fear and disappointment of possibly losing a lifetimes work for people with absolutely no regard for the hard work of others that produce the food we all eat. No way to relate to the frantic pace at which people along the route had to get informed and pass that information along in order to get even a semblance of an informed statement made in defense of their own property to a panel of basically deaf ears. Just a group of bodies placed there for show. In addition, the 1900 notified by your agency in March of 2016 did not include a single citizen affected along the route. Instead your agency determined that government agencies, schools, townships, local, county and state boards/councils should be notified that a train route might possibly be planned through their districts. Not even a letter to those entities saying….”hey, by the way can you notify the people in your area for us. They have no clue what’s about to hit them…literally!” And the advertising campaign which is being paid for by the STB at taxpayer expense shows blatant and clear endorsement of the project which hasn’t even made it through the scoping process. Your government seal posted big front and center makes it look more like an advertisement directly from the STB not Frank Patton or his Great Lakes Basin Railroad. Anyone in the advertising industry would recognize your ad campaign as a clear endorsement of GLBT. There is no way anyone is going to convince me that these advertisements are intended to inform the public of a potential project in their area as Mr. Navecky explained to me. We are clearly more informed than your agency gives us credit for. They are intended solely to produce new partnerships and endorsements for the project and you should be ashamed for attempting to use our own tax dollars to promote a project that wants to take our privately owned property for strictly private gain. And you are performing the same advertising services for the dozens of other projects working their way through your STB offices. Millions of dollars annually promoting private interest projects some of which may or may not make it to fruition, all at taxpayer expense. Millions of dollars being used in a way that we as taxpayers do not approve. Your agency should technically be required by law to inform each and every individual along the route that might possibly be affected instead of promoting these projects through national and internet advertising campaigns at the expense of citizens rights. I have attached a couple of examples of those advertisements. Some of which were not so intelligently placed. Perhaps your advertising coordinator might need some lessons on the importance of placement. That in consideration, it was clearly apparent that there was an intentional attempt to keep this out of the public eye until the very last second. Unfortunately that plan backfired. Your agency and Frank Patton came off looking like you were all trying to pull a fast one on the citizens of three states. It is time for the citizens to demand a change in how the STB handles its promotion of private interest projects that choose to attempt to usurp our undeniable rights to own land. I would also consider your agency’s attempt to give citizens only thirty days to respond to the threat of quick take eminent domain a predatory practice. Especially when we see clear evidence that citizens were intentionally being kept in the dark from the very inception of this project which was promoted for quite some time through area universities and planning commissions making their future plans, but never announced fully to the public. And when word did get out….it was the citizens themselves who notified each other through social media, emails and any other mode of communication they could find. It is shameful…..absolutely shameful…that the STB saw fit not to inform the public of this in any way, shape or form. As you are now aware by the number of letters flooding your office, we managed to let a vast number of citizens in on the big little secret brewing at your “best small agency to work for”. I am so glad that the members of your staff enjoy such spacious private spaces to work in that are so conducive to happy employees. Your staff, made up of mostly lawyers and economists, definitely need their expansive private space to consider the personal impact your projects have on the general public. Perhaps you should consider the same concept for the residents who live along the routes you take into consideration. We’d like to enjoy our own private space on our own private property that we have bought and paid for over the expanse of several years and would generate quite a bit of happiness for the people here that work on their privately owned land. Your employees did not pay for that privilege of private work space at the STB….the American Taxpayer did and that would be me and the other citizens along the proposed GLB route that you and your agency have held hostage and terrorized over the past three months. Had it not been for such intense public scrutiny and vocal objections in the media of even many of the community leaders I doubt that we would have been given the extensions on our public comments and testimony as it seems your agency’s main goal is to promote the national transportation policy goals of congress….not the American people who actually live and work here. We have already determined that congress has no interest in protecting the people from corporate or private interests. So where exactly do we stand here? I say we are all standing here on the edge of a precipice called America's fleeting freedom. Real Fleeting Freedom! Do we as a nation truly possess this unalienable right anymore if your agency and agencies like RETA in New Mexico have the right to take private property and give it to private intvestors for their own and their investment partners personal gain? I would say not. That would mean that every man, woman and young adult in this nation’s work force is working toward a LIE. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for anyone in America unless you are a corporate giant, private/foreign investor, or work for one. There is NO American Dream unless you are a member of the corporate elite or private investment groups…foreign or otherwise! The multitude of government agencies we as a society have allowed to take over our government and our lives has eliminated all the freedoms we once possessed. The corporate elite and private interests now have rule over every aspect of our lives through their seeming control over every politician and government agency in this nation. Are all of our personal possessions including our land, homes and farms just a mirage waiting for the next government agency to lay claim for their next pet private interest project? I have two private investor projects trying to lay claim the same field in front of my house for two separate projects. What purpose does it serve for any of us to be working to own a home or toward retirement or anything else for that matter? Your agency has made it impossible for any of us to plan or work toward tomorrow or any future until this whole thing is settled. It’s an absolute shame that agencies like this have the ability to put millions of hard working people’s lives across three states on hold for a project based on personal greed and gain and that of shady private investors who can’t even show their faces. Personally, my opinion is that some of these investors are probably members of congress or some who used to work as top government officials, who don’t want the public to know where their investments lie. We are well aware of the insider trading blatantly conducted by most members of congress that would otherwise be considered illegal for the average citizen. Unfortunately, regardless of who we speculate is behind this project…we are at the mercy and hands of a three member board that has neither made it their priority to reach out to any of the land owners along these routes nor shown any interest or compassion for the impact on hard working citizens so rudely awakened in March to the devastation that was possible to their peaceful existence, the negative impact to their ability to earn a living off their own private land and the pristine world famous prime farmland which provides food for the nation and around the world that could possibly be forever destroyed for the sake of a few private investors desperately grasping for more of our almighty tax dollars. I ask the STB to stop the flow of our tax dollars to private/foreign investors. I ask the STB to stop the practice of using our tax dollars to promote through advertising projects that have detrimental effects on the constituents along their paths. I request the STB stop using our tax dollars against us to take property from hard working citizens for private investor gain. I urge the Surface Transportation Board to take the no action/no construction decision and stop all federal funds going toward the Great Lakes Basin Transportation LLC in the name of all American’s unalienable rights to the freedoms allowed them in our United States Constitution. The freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on a person’s own hard earned privately owned land are on the line here. I urge your agency to make the decision that preserves the rights and liberties granted our citizens that our country is so famous for. Sincerely, Andrea and Peter Rackmyer Sheridan, Illinois
Submitted by: Andrea Rackmyer and Peter Rackmyer · Sheridan, Illinois
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
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